LEE BOYCE: The Wolf of Wall Street may glamourise dodgy dealing but it's also a gritty parable to stand against other great money movies

I usually avoid the cinema - ticket prices seem to go up every time I visit, popcorn is now £4 a box and irritating movie-goers usually deter me.

But when I spotted The Wolf of Wall Street was on and with a Sunday afternoon to kill, a friend and I decided to give it a whirl.

This is Money doesn’t usually write film reviews, but I think The Wolf of Wall Street is worthy of a mention – the film was entertaining, funny (in places), harrowing and tickled my inner financial geekdom to boot.

Dodgy trader: DiCaprio stars at Jordan Belfort - a real-life fraudster who wrote a book based on his Wall Street experiences

And for the main, it’s true. Unlike Gordan Gekko in eighties classic ‘Wall Street,’ Jordan Belfort – the main character in the film – isn’t fictional. The film is based on his life and that’s what makes this interesting and made me detest him even more.

Be warned, if you watch this film you’ve got to be in it for the long-haul. It’s a three-hour beast. I went in clean shaven and came out with stubble. I guess it adds value to the ticket, which works out as £3 an hour.

And a second warning – the amount of swearing, casual drug use and nudity in this film is vast. In fact, this film uses the f-word more than 500 times.

But this all actually adds to the hatred I ended up feeling for these financial cowboys of early nineties Wall Street. In my opinion, they were vicious money-obsessed animals who duped thousands of people out of vast amounts of cash (more about this later).

The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Belfort. Such was his desire to make the movie he bought the rights in a bidding war against another Hollywood heavyweight, Brad Pitt.

Criticism has been aimed at the film for glamourising the lifestyle. For me, I can see why – the parties, fast cars, mansion, helicopter, yacht, drugs, women – largely the film illustrates these scammers as ‘heroes.’

In reality, they were villains and Belfort the biggest villain of them all.

Deplorable character: Despite DiCaprio doing a good job at making the audience fall for Belfort, it's clear the real-life character had a rotten inner core

In fact, according to sources, a showing of the film in the City resulted in people cheering when the main character, who had been sober for two years, falls off the wagon and starts taking vast amounts of cocaine.

But despite the glamourising, I felt ultimately pity for Belfort and his allies. Sure, they had the money and lifestyles, but the moral of the tale is this, if you do illegal things and build a fortune based on lies, the probability is, you won’t win. And you will probably have the FBI breathing down your neck to strip it all away.

The bigger you are the harder the fall.

With more money came more outrageous behaviour and drug use. This was Belfort’s downfall. He had two children with his second wife but lost them as his life spiralled out of control and arrest imminent.

He started by trading penny stocks in a car garage with a handful of friends after beginning a career in Wall Street at the wrong time – his first day was Black Monday and he lost his job quicker than he started.

These ‘pink-sheet’ stocks his company dealt with earned 50 per cent commission. His company Stratton Oakmont became so powerful via his salesman 'brilliance' that he managed to convince firms to use them as a place to perform their Initial Public Offerings.

In the end, his lavish party/playboy lifestyle and dodgy tactics landed him in hot water with the authorities. He faced 20 years in prison.

He ratted in some of his colleagues (there's no such thing as friends on Wall Street) and instead ended up inside for 22 months for the penny stock selling and manipulation of the stock market – supposedly let out for good behaviour.

Now this is where my criticism of the film comes in. Jordan Belfort is always illustrated as a ‘nice’ guy in the film when not doing drugs; staff worship him, the prison let him out because he is good and DiCaprio illustrates him as a classic ‘anti-hero’.

Limelight: The real Jordan Belfort is back in the public eye after the movie was released

Rocky, for instance, made me want to be a boxer when I watched it for the first time. Goodfellas a gangster, so-on and so-forth – The Wolf of Wall Street, despite the lavish lifestyle illustrated, I hope doesn't make people want to make a quick buck being a rogue broker overnight.

I overheard one man on my way out saying: 'I want to learn how to become a broker like that.'

Belfort must have had an inner evil core. He tricked people out of their money – money that many of them probably never saw again.

Their side of the story is never told.

I want to know who some of the most defrauded individuals were, how they feel about Belfort and whether they saw any of their cash come back.

According to prosecutors, an agreement means Belford has to pay $110million in compensation to victims, with half of his income going towards that. But according to a number of reports, only a tiny fraction of income from book sales, movie rights and his motivational speaking gigs have gone towards to this.

None of this is clear in the movie – the victims are overlooked, as are the shady details to how much compensation he has paid back.

I would love to interview Belfort and his chums now to see how true the movie really is. But I get the feeling Belfort might be hard to reach, especially considering he now lives life as a motivational speaker and sells his training manual on his website for a whopping $1,997.

One thing is for sure, The Wolf of Wall Street is a brilliant movie and one that will make some people view Belfort as a genius crook and others as nothing more than a lucky chancer who deserved what came to him.

For me, it's easily the latter.

As his Dad said in the movie: his chickens well and truly came home to roost.

Rating:

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FIVE OTHER TOP FINANCIAL THEMED MOVIES

Wall Street(1987): This classic directed by Oliver Stone starred Michael Douglas as power hungry Gordon Gekko and Charlie Sheen as Bud Fox, a young stockbroker equally hungry for power and money. Wall Street: Money Never Sleep was released in 2010 and although not as impressive as the original, is still a fascinating watch.

Trading Places (1983): The Eighties was a great decade for money movies and this one proved light-hearted relief in the form of Eddie Murphy as Billy Ray Valentine. As a homeless guy he 'trades places' with Dan Aykroyd's character Louis Winthorpe and becomes a commodities futures trader with relative ease.

It’s a Wonderful Life(1946): This classic was released almost 70 years ago - and is critically acclaimed. A businessman is shown by a guardian angel what life would have been like if never existed. A Christmas feel good classic.

Boiler Room (2000): This film was actually inspired by Jordan Belfort's behaviour and came more than a decade before The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Ben Affleck and Vin Diesel.

The Pursuit of Happiness (2006): This emotional movie starring Will Smith as down-on-his luck Chris Gardner (alongside his son Jaden making his film debut) was a touching look at how he made it from broke to broker. A real rollercoaster of highs and lows.